The present invention is systems and methods for alerting users of personal electronic devices to the occurrence of an event on one or more of those electronic devices.
In recent years, the use of a wide variety of personal electronic devices has achieved immense popularity. These devices include portable telephones, pagers, portable and hand-held email systems, palm-top or portable computers, and many other similar devices. When using each of these devices, there may be times when it is desirable to alert the user of the occurrence of an event. For example, with a portable telephone (e.g., a cellular telephone), it may be desirable to alert the user that a call is being received. As another example, with a pager, it may be desirable to alert the user to the receipt of a page.
With most or all of these devices, the user may typically be alerted to the occurrence of an event using an audible tone or series of tones, such as a ring, beep, etc. Unfortunately, however, these sounds are frequently found to be objectionable to persons in the vicinity of the user, especially when in environments such as restaurants, movie theaters, certain sporting events (such as golf and tennis events), trains, busses, libraries, etc.
Similarly, when in loud environments, these audible alerts might not be heard by the user. Such loud environments may include restaurants, bars, clubs, musical concerts, crowded sidewalks, automobiles, sporting events, etc.
To overcome these problems with audible alerts, many devices include a vibration alert that causes the device to vibrate when an alert is necessary. However, when the user is not wearing the device or in direct contact with the device (such as when the device is in a brief case, purse, backpack, or when the user has set aside the device), the alert may not be felt.
Therefore, it is an object of the invention to provide systems and methods for alerting a user of one or more personal electronic devices to the occurrence of an event relating to one or more of those devices.
It is also an object of the invention, to provide a mechanism for automatically placing personal electronic devices into a quiet mode in order to prevent the devices from disturbing persons near the devices.
In accordance with these and other objects of the present invention, systems and methods for alerting users of personal electronic devices are provided. In a first aspect of the invention, these systems and methods alert a user to the occurrence of an event in one or more of the devices by receiving a wireless transmission from the device(s) and then by providing an acoustic, optical, electrical, or mechanical stimulus to the user. In a second aspect of the invention, these systems and methods may also provide a quiet mode control mechanism through which personal electronic devices are automatically put into a low volume or silent alert operation mode so as to not disturb persons in the vicinity of the devices. This control mechanism may use a wireless transmitter to transmit a signal to any personal electronic device within a given area.